


tonight the heavy earth is falling

by gatheringbones



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Caretaking, F/M, Trauma, consent/boundary negotiation, dream fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatheringbones/pseuds/gatheringbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavellan asks a favor. Solas does his best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tonight the heavy earth is falling

_"I want to be two people at once. One runs away."_

_-Peter Heller_

* * *

This wasn’t how it went.

The ribs, she remembers those. She can feel the break in the middle of her back- nothing will ever erase the memory of the impact with the trebuchet, the crisp crack of bone giving way only momentarily obliterated by the back of her head connecting with the wood. Lavellan will carry the sound of her breaking ribs to the end of her days; she will carry the memory of Haven burning and the screams of the pilgrims still trapped in their burning houses until the coming of the next age, but the rest-

The rest is wrong.

The snow reaches her hips. It swallows her, or tries to, and deep beneath where her feet struggle to gain traction there is nothing but what feels like sucking mud. The wolves have inexplicably become even louder- there is no reason for them to be this loud- and Lavellan would clap her hands over her ears if she could make her hands and fingers respond. She doesn’t have to look at them to know they are black down to the bone. She doesn’t have to see her feet to know they are the same.

She resists, or tries to.

The wolves were never this loud. The snow was never this deep. Her toes and fingers and ears were white when they found her- white, but not black- and there had been stars visible above the lip of the Frostbacks. Stars of the People, the halla and the huntress that had guided her south and west to the likeliest gathering point for the survivors..

But there are no stars here. The slope of the mountain does not end, and wind and the sounds of wolves scrape away at her until there is little left but what must be left- the urge to struggle.

_Stop this,_ he says, in the spaces between. _Stop this lethallan, you never did this._

The wind rises, blotting out his voice, but then he does something, changes something, and she can feel his satisfaction as he makes himself be heard.

_Where are you going?_ he tries again.

“To find Cassandra. To find the survivors.”

It takes enormous effort to talk; this space was not meant for words. Her voice sounds dull even to her. She had spoken before, to cover up her broken ribs and numbing tiredness, to cover up the hiccuping terror that Corypheus had planted inside her, but here she walked only in shuddering silence.

_You found us,_ he says, too gentle by far. _You were fearless._

“I am afraid,” she says stubbornly. As if in response, the wolves reach a fever pitch- the darkness bays at her- and it’s worse somehow, it’s worse than when it was just her in the dark vainly forging a path through the snow.

When he speaks next he sounds thoughtful.

_They are hunting,_ he says _but not for you._

He has stopped somewhere behind her left shoulder. He does not struggle as she struggles. The snow does not break beneath him, and the wind does not suck the breath from him before he can get so much as a word out.

He is using his bone-setter’s voice, she realizes. Removed and placid and sounding rather of the opinion that the patient is approaching being unreasonable. As if there were anything unreasonable about wading through hip-deep snow in the crushing dark when there are bandages for her ribs and warm water for her fingers and a featherbed to sink into just a heartbeat away.

_Turn around,_ he urges her. _Face them, as you did before._

“I didn’t,” she snaps. “I ran.”

_Where did you run, lethallan?_

“To Skyhold,” she says, and saying the word almost summons it before her- wood, stone, horses and men, the bread baking in the mornings and the rattle of raven feathers in the tallest reaches of the tower.

He latches on immediately to the change. _Go there. Go there now. See the walls around there. See the stone. Be in your own bed. Do it for me._

It almost works.

She tries. She smells beeswax, oil, and smoke, she feels the roughness of linen and the wrapped bundle of a warm brick at her feet- but it’s wrong, it feels wrong- and then she is away and free, skipping furiously across the surface of the Fade like a flat stone on water.

She hits the flagstones knees-first and feels the shock travel all the way up her body.

The darkness writhes with too many legs and eyes both. Her hands are shackled before her, the iron cuffs cinched tight. She can smell herself- scalp and skin and shit and stink- and the realization that he has somehow followed her heaves her to her feet.

He sinks to his heels before her in a whisper of fur.

_This never happened,_ he says, his brow knitted. _Try to remember._

“Go away,” she snarls, sagging underneath the weight of all that chain.

_I would,_ he says. _Truly I would._

A leg from the wall of the Chantry cell reaches out to brush her cheek, and she doesn’t scream, doesn’t bite down on a groan, just hunkers her shoulders and braces her feet as she jerks at the bolts connecting her to the floor.

One has some give. Of course it does. It will never give any more than it does now, but that’s the entire point. It’s there for her to throw herself against.

_I can’t undo them for you,_ he says, and his eyes and voice are flat. _I can only tell you what you already know._

“They left me here,” she grits between her teeth. “Like Cole. They blamed me for the Divine. They left me in the dark.”

_Ah yes_ , he says. _And you have been down here all this time, have you not? Cassandra_ must _be displeased._

“STOP it,” she hisses.

_I would very much wish to. How long do you intend to stay here?_

Giddily, she thinks that if she can just get past the knob of bone in her thumb, she can slip free, bolts in the floor or no. Something in her wrists pops as she begins to yank in earnest. Blood coats the iron, greasing her efforts.

_Enough of this_ , he says. _Enough._

He reaches for her, or so she thinks. It can’t be borne.

Without pause, she breaks her thumb.

Lavellan pulls free from the manacle, blood sheeting down to her elbow, and then she is free, free, free, lunging out across the landscape of possibilities to her next landing point.

It entered through a cut in her hand, or perhaps some poison introduced it to her system. It festered there, seething and growing until it was too entrenched to cut out.

Her throat is blocked with crystals; she cannot speak. As she chokes, they curl and constrict and spill further out her mouth, red as blood, red as the heart of a torch, and _alive._

_Hardly unexpected,_ he remarks. _But unlikely._

He lances the terror like a boil, and her fury propels her onward. Smarting with indignation, she lands somewhere else, only to lose track of where she is and what she’s doing as soon as she settles.

He reminds her, of course.

_You control all of this, lethallan_ , he says. _You could even banish me from here, if you tried._

The village dogs are hot on her heels. She’s eight, barefaced, and if they catch her they won’t be able to use her clan markings to identify her after. The air burns in her lungs and the stolen silver in her fist seems to shine in the dim light- Keeper will _slap_ her for that.

_Ah, childhood_ , he says. _I was wondering when that would make an appearance._

“Stop it,” she says again, as she has been saying for time interminable.

She is wrung out, and back on her knees in the snow outside the wreckage of Haven. Her ribs ache- her _heart_ aches- but-

He stands with his back to the fires- the light from behind leaves him outlined like a dying star. The wind whips through the furs at his throat and collar, but he doesn’t seem to feel its bite.

_Yes,_ he says. As before, he lowers himself before her. He is realer here, she can’t shake the feeling of how much realer he has always looked here; even the scar on his forehead shines more silver than it did in the light of day.

_You ran,_ he says, again. _You found us._

He gathers her hands in his. _You were very brave_ , he says, so softly that she barely even feels how deep it cuts.

“This is _mine_ ,” she says, and hearing her own voice shake like that is almost as bad as what came before. “This is _private_.”

He nods. _It is. It is the most private thing there is. I would not come here uninvited. I would not stay if you did not wish it._

The snow is shrinking around him, the thaw spreading from where his feet touch the ground. Without thinking, she clutches at the snow, as if by focusing harder she can bring it back, pile it higher and higher until it buries the bones of the Chantry and all the charred and broken bodies there.

“Why?” she demands, sounding heart-stricken, heart broken, and her eyes are locked on hers and they are so impossibly _sad_. It’s her own sadness, reflected back at her a thousand times until it seems bottomless. A deep and private and inexorable sadness, a sadness that can’t be budged or burned or buried.

So gently, he says, _You asked me to._

“I _never_ ,” she says, appalled. “I wouldn’t-”

_You wanted to learn how to control the dreams. See how quickly you have done so._

Her hands are warming. There is grass beneath her knees, and she remembers that he is many things- he is arch, he is dismissive, he wears blandness like a mocking disguise, but he is never, _never_ cruel. Again, she smells beeswax; again, she hears the muffled roar of a winter storm behind thick leaded windows.'

_Yes,_ he says, holding himself so still and watching her so carefully. _There, come-_

 She lunges again. Crosswise and down, as far away as she can go.

And she knows where she lands before it even rises up around her, the horror rises and strikes her in the face before she can dig her teeth and fingers in and wrench herself away, but-

_The air is hot and thick and muggy, the drone of insects carving a furrow straight down the center of her brain. The light is too bright; everything is too bright and loud and terribly close, and the flies are burrowing into the eyes of the halla, clustered so thick and deep that she imagines the chambers of its skull so stuffed with flies that they will come pouring endlessly out and follow her, wherever she goes, however far she runs._

“No,” he says, ringing in her head, resounding through the buzz.

_The sails of the aravels are rent. The spars split and sagging drunkenly across the ground. This is what lays in the heart of her, this is what followed her from the Free Marches all the way down to the Frostbacks._

“Change it,” he demands. Somewhere, a hand tightens on her wrist. Long fingers wrapping solid.

_The children have flies inside of them- when bone and flesh and humors have sunk into the earth only the flies will remain, wearing the shapes of children._

“It all belongs to you, every second of it. Not the other way around.”

_He’s wrong, of course, there is no belonging to yourself after something like this. There is no space that is yours and yours alone forever after._

“What did you do then?” he insists, “This wasn’t where it ended, this wasn’t where you left it.”

_We took care of them. We sang the right songs. We burned sweet boughs, and placed the halla inside the aravels with the People. It wasn’t enough._

There are lips at her temple. There is weight, warm and heavy, secured across her waist. “What would be enough, vhenan?”

_Anguish strikes her. Chagrin, even deeper._

_It would be enough to sleep. It would be enough to remember the flies and the bewildered, splayed limbs of the halla and keep the distance of memory between us both._

“Memory,” he breathes. “Memory and dreams are never faithful to each other. Keep them separate, where you can’t twist them, where you can’t do yourself harm with them.”

_I tried, she wants to say. I tried and it wasn’t enough. I keep trying to make it real, to make it how it really happened, but that’s even worse._

_The wolves never followed her from Haven to hound her for her failures. She was not kept in the dark, away from the responsibilities of leadership, where only her lack of resolve would prevent her from slipping free and away._

“I am sorry,” he murmurs. Fitted against her, hip to hip, one long, lean arm tucked around her waist and his lips against her ear. His hand is there, between her breasts, with her own clutching it as if for a lifeline. Outside, the wind launches itself against the bones of Skyhold and scrapes its teeth against the windows. “I would never have looked at these things. I would have never have driven you to do so.”

The breath gusts in and out of her as if she has won a race, but her hand tightens even so. Gratitude bleeds out from between her fingers.

There, in the shredded remnants of the dream, she fords through hip-deep snow to the shattered remains of the aravel. Broken chains dangle from her wrists, and the sounds of wolves wrap around her like the leg hooked over her knee and anchoring her to the bed.

_We took care of them._

_I got out, I found the survivors._

_We straightened their limbs, we sang the songs._

_I ran. I was very brave._

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